Privacy Policy

• What you give us when you create a profile: your name, email address and password, and optionally your university, course, bio, goals, profile photo and LinkedIn link. Your password is handled by our sign-in provider and stored in scrambled (hashed) form. We never see it.
• What you add to the site: articles you submit, challenge responses, discussion posts and replies, likes, glossary terms you add, and any application you send with your interests and a writing sample.
• What we work out from your activity: your badges, contributor tier and certificate, which are calculated automatically from what you have published and done on the site.
• Basic visit data: we count page views and visits in aggregate using Vercel Web Analytics. It doesn't use cookies and doesn't build profiles of individual visitors.

Your browser also keeps a sign-in token so you stay signed in. The site needs it to work, we don't use it to track you, and we don't use advertising or marketing cookies.

Public to anyone with the link, no sign-in needed: your name, photo, university, course, bio, goals, LinkedIn link, contributor tier and badges, your published articles, and your discussion posts and replies. Challenge responses may also be visible to other visitors.

Not public: your email address and password. Your email is used for your account and is visible only to the site's editors. Applications to contribute are also visible only to editors.

We ask search engines not to list member profile pages or the contributors directory. Published articles carry the author's name and may appear in search results. We can't control other websites that copy or link to public content.

• To run your account, show your profile, and publish your contributions. This is needed to provide the service you signed up for.
• To send emails that are part of your account, such as a password reset link.
• To keep the site secure, prevent misuse, and understand which pages are used. This is our legitimate interest in running a safe and useful site.

We don't sell your information and we don't use it for advertising. The only automated decision on the site is the calculation of your contributor tier, which is based on how many of your articles have been published.

• Supabase provides our database, sign-in and file storage. Our data is stored in Ireland.
• Vercel hosts the website and provides aggregate analytics. Vercel may process data in other countries, using recognised legal safeguards for international transfers.

We don't share your information with anyone else unless the law requires it.

We keep your information until you delete your profile. You can do that yourself at any time: sign in, open My Hive, and scroll to the bottom. Deleting permanently removes your login, profile, photo, articles, discussions, replies, challenge responses, likes and applications, and it takes effect straight away.

Copies that other people have made of public content, such as a screenshot or a shared link preview, are outside our control.

If you are in the UK or EU, you have the right to ask for a copy of your information, to have it corrected or deleted, to restrict or object to how it is used, and to receive it in a portable format. You can edit or delete most of your information yourself in My Hive. For anything else, email us and we will reply within one month.

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information, you can complain to your data protection authority. In the UK, that is the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.

The Commercial Hive is aimed at university students and graduates. It is not intended for anyone under 16.

If we change this policy, we will update the date at the top. If the change is significant, we will also put a notice on the site. Our Terms of Use explain the rules for using The Commercial Hive.